US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton slammed Canada Monday for not inviting Sweden, Finland, and Iceland for the Arctic summit held near Ottawa and made an early exit from the gathering. Attended by foreign ministers of Canada, Denmark, Russia, the US and Norway, the summit was organized to discuss the future of the resource-rich Arctic region which contains one fourth of the world's oil and gas reserves as well as unfathomed mineral wealth. Upset over Canada's decision not to invite Sweden, Finland and Iceland, Hillary Clinton didn't attend the closing news conference and left.

MI6 suspects that airline staff working for Mossad may have copied passports of Britons flying to Israel, News of the World reports, adding authorities also concerned about security searches carried out on British officials attending terrorism conference in country last September. News of the World: Israel 'stole thousands of Brit IDs': Airline staff working for secret service may have copied passports, chiefs fear.

“The ink has not yet dried on the health care reform bill, and already some deplorable health insurance companies are trying to duck away from covering children with pre-existing conditions. This is outrageous.”

Elected in 2008 and taking office in 2009, it has taken just over a year in which to lose the trust so vital to a successful presidency.

This brief review of the presidency since the end of the last Great Depression brings us now to a present-day Depression if judged by the growing numbers of unemployed and to a president who has forced a health care “reform” of Medicare on Americans, more than half of whom manifestly opposed it.

The tripling of the national debt generated the spontaneous creation of Tea Party organizations to oppose him and a growing wave of derision for his arrogance, his dependence on TelePrompters, and his treatment of the nation’s traditional allies, England, France, and Israel. The book of history is written one day at a time, but it is clear that Obama has already run out of time, having lost the vital component of trust for the remaining 1,000-plus days of his term. Ignoring the public will, he can still do a great deal more damage to the republic.

A renowned environmentalist, known for his advocacy of population reduction as a means of offsetting climate change, has called for “a more authoritative world” where freedom comes second to tackling what he sees as the devastating effects of global warming. Futurist James Lovelock, tells the London Guardian that he believes “It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while,” in order to save humanity.

Only one third of TV weathercasters believe that there is a scientific consensus on climate change. Despite the strong scientific consensus among climate scientists, almost two-thirds (61%) of TV weathercasters think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening. Perhaps partly as a result, 79% of our respondents indicated that coverage of climate change science must reflect a “balance” of viewpoints just as coverage of political or social issues are covered. Prior research conducted by others, however, has shown that “balanced” news coverage about climate change is misleading in that it tends to give audience members the false impression that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening.

"We are of the view that sanction is not a healthy path and... that the best route is diplomacy." Erdogan then wondered why the international community refused to impose sanctions against the Middle East's sole nuclear weapons power, in an apparent allusion to Israel. "We are against nuclear weapons in our region. But is there another country in our region that has nuclear weapons? Yes, there is. And have they been subjected to sanctions? No," Erdogan said.

Former head of NSA calls for the internet to be "re-engineered" so as to eliminate anonymity and track down contributors to sites like WikiLeaks.

The west's acclaim of a democratic dawn rings hollow as long as Allawi and Maliki refuse to observe the rule of law. The idea that elections are the be-all and end-all of democracy is naive at best. At worst they are a shallow and unsustainable justification for the carnage that followed invasion and regime change. Iraq's new ruling elite was brought back to the country by US and British troops; they are now presiding over a country that has repeatedly gone to the polls but received precious little beyond politically motivated violence, widespread corruption and now a flagrant disregard for the rule of law by their elected politicians. AntiWar: Move Could Ban Six Allawi MPs From Office. The Independent: Links to Ba’athists could end Allawi’s hopes of seizing power.

Thousands of homeless people are being forced off the streets of South Africa to hide the scale of poverty there from World Cup fans. More than 800 tramps, beggars and street children have already been removed from Johannesburg and sent to remote settlements hundreds of miles away. And in Cape Town, where England face Algeria on June 18, up to 300 have been moved to Blikkiesdorp camp where 1,450 families are crammed in a settlement of tin huts designed for just 650 people.

Russian death squads ‘pulverise’ Chechens - Elite commandos have broken their silence to reveal how they torture, execute and then blow captives to atoms to obliterate the grisly evidence

So I guess this war is enough like the Iraq War that President Obama, like his predecessor, can only visit the troops at night, in secret. And the whiff of triumphalism is familiar, too: "we never quit". Really? Lebanon 1984 didn't happen? Vietnam came out differently than we remember? Still, the most jarring part of the Obama fly-in to Bagram was the part of the base he (apparently) didn't visit: the secret prison we've been running there for years. It's Gitmo on steroids. AWIP/Bill van Auken: Obama’s visit underscores US crisis in Afghanistan.

Anthony Lawson sets out the implications of the recent US Congressional letter signed by half of its members endorsing blind support of the racist, worse-than-apartheid state of Israel. “Putting considerations for a foreign power ahead of considerations for the safety of the United States and its citizens has to be treason. It could not be anything else.”

Corrie was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to protect Palestinian homes. Her family has been met with hostility while pursuing a civil suit after calling the investigation a 'whitewash.'

In 2010, Jews in Israel and around the world will celebrate Passover beginning on March 30th. Passover is the seven-day holiday of the Feast of Unleavened Bread commemorating the ancient Hebrews' escape from enslavement in Egypt. (In Israel, March 30th is also Land Day: the day when Palestinians commemorate and protest the confiscation of their lands by the Israeli government; but that’s another story.)

My Jewish sisters and brothers, you can continue to look away as Israel claims to speak and to act in your name. It kills and maims in your name. It dispossesses and occupies in your name. It talks peace and wages war in your name. If you turn a deaf ear to their mourning again this year, if you harden your heart again this year, if your voice is not raised this year in protest – then you are acquiescing in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of another people, in your name. If you cannot see Palestinians as fully human now, you will hear them trying to give voice to their humanity in your nightmares, year after year, until you can see and until you can hear.

Did you know that for the last three years until today Israel has been completely blocking all shipments of clothes and shoes to the Gaza Strip?

The banking giant HSBC removed two companies involved in carbon trading from its Climate Change Index on Monday because they had lost too much value. Analysts from HSBC said the cause was mainly that governments had failed to come up with a timetable for a global climate deal at the United Nations summit in Copenhagen in December.

Concern is growing that the United Kingdom's Liverpool Care Pathway, intended to ease the comfort of patients whose death is inevitable, is being misused to railroad elderly patients onto a path toward early death. "While we've been preoccupied with the moral pluses and minuses of living wills, assisted suicide and euthanasia, legalized execution of some of society's most vulnerable has become available, most probably at a hospital near you," writes Telegraph columnist Liz Hunt. "How did we let this happen?"

The European Commission has proposed that websites containing child pornography should be blocked across the European Union and that maximum sentences of five to ten years should be imposed on human traffickers.